Robledo: Petro está haciendo un daño espantoso a la izquierda

Jorge Enrique Robledo finished sixth in Bogotá's recent mayoral race, capturing just 34,658 votes—1.13 percent of the total. Five years earlier, when he ran for Senate, he placed third nationally with 229,276 votes. The decline is sharp, but the 73-year-old former senator insists he will remain in politics as long as his energy holds. That resolve hardens noticeably when the conversation turns to President Gustavo Petro, a man with whom Robledo once shared not just a political party but a vision for Colombia's left.

Both men rose to prominence through the Democratic Pole, the coalition that unified Colombia's fractured left movements in the early 2000s and, for the first time, gave the left enough force to win Bogotá's mayoralty and become a genuine contender for national power. For a decade, the Pole was synonymous with the Colombian left itself. But their partnership fractured irreparably after the 2010 presidential election, when Petro ran as the party's candidate. Robledo supported him then, orchestrating the campaign. When Petro lost to Juan Manuel Santos—Uribe's former defense minister—and chose to negotiate with the winner rather than oppose him, Robledo saw it as betrayal. The distance between them has only widened since. Today, Robledo stands as perhaps the most prominent leftist voice openly opposing the president.

In conversation, Robledo's critique is surgical. He argues that Petro governs as an opposition figure would, manufacturing media spectacles and proposing solutions that sound transformative but dissolve under scrutiny. The fiscal rule debate exemplifies this, Robledo contends. Petro denounces the International Monetary Fund and World Bank orthodoxy that constrains public spending, but he knows Congress lacks the votes to change it. The proposal generates uncertainty without substance—a comparison Robledo makes to Donald Trump, who performed opposition from the presidency while leaving structural conditions unchanged. Each day brings three or four provocative statements designed to capture media attention, Robledo says, before vanishing like smoke.

The economic picture Robledo paints is grim, though he acknowledges Petro inherited weakness. Colombia imports excessively and exports too little. External debt stands at 186 billion dollars, a figure that reveals deep structural rot. Yet Petro's government, in Robledo's view, has made no meaningful pivot. The promised agrarian reform remains invisible. The notion of replacing petroleum revenue with tourism is, in his blunt assessment, nonsensical. Construction contracted eight percent in the most recent quarter compared to the same period last year. The Central Bank raises interest rates to cool inflation, but Robledo sees ideology masquerading as necessity. Meanwhile, the government fails to spend on public works and housing with sufficient speed—sectors that could anchor recovery.

When pressed on what Petro has done well, Robledo acknowledges agreement on peace processes and normalizing relations with Venezuela, reversals of Iván Duque's absurd policies. But execution has failed. Social leaders continue to be assassinated at alarming rates. The promised economic reactivation has not materialized. The healthcare reform offers a clearer example of Petro's strategic incompetence. He brought it to Congress without securing the votes, watched it stall, and fractured his own coalition in the process. Petro was elected with backing from former presidents Juan Manuel Santos, Ernesto Samper, and César Gaviria, along with the Liberal and Conservative parties. That coalition dissolved quickly because Petro tried to impose a reform that threatened the private health insurers those figures defend. A wise president, Robledo suggests, knows which battles can be won.

When asked whether he bears responsibility for dividing the left, Robledo reaches back fifty years. The Colombian left has always been fractious, he notes. In 1971, the student movement that birthed modern leftism split immediately over armed struggle, economic nationalization, and whether to align with the Soviet Union or remain independent. Robledo's faction rejected violence and state ownership of the economy, positions history vindicated. Why should anyone be surprised that differences persist? Yet he acknowledges the paradox: the left votes better when unified, as it did through the Democratic Pole and now through Petro's Historic Pact. His own party, Dignity and Commitment, founded with Sergio Fajardo, received only 1.13 percent in Bogotá and 4.2 percent nationally in last year's presidential election.

Robledo's final indictment is that Petro is inflicting terrible damage on the left and on any idea of change itself. The right now has an easy narrative: anyone who thinks differently must share Petro's confused vision. That harms everyone else on the left. The irony cuts deep—part of the right, including those former presidents, stands with Petro. When critics call Robledo timid or rightward-drifting, he dismisses them as either confused or deliberately dishonest. He challenges Petro to a public forum, any topic, with any of the president's best minds. Let the country judge who has betrayed the left's actual ideas.